More Cold Days In Hell
by dalby
Summary: Severus is looking for trouble. James is looking for authority. Dumbledore is looking for a resolution. James' POV on life debts, innocent bystanders, father issues and what else strikes his fancy. No slash. But who knows...


**_Disclaimer:_** All the characters belong to J. K. Rowling.

**_Author's note:_** My first HP fan fic. Be kind. There are three main characters in this story: James (who is "I"), Dumbledore (who is "you") and Severus. James' POV on life debts, innocent bystanders, father issues and what else strikes his fancy that faithful day when Albus has just told him that someone close to him must have have betrayed him and Lily...

**More Cold Days In Hell**

'_Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr. Malfoy…'_ - Dumbledore, PS p. 322

You know, the first time ever I noticed that Severus Snape was an adult, it was the evening before our final depart from Hogwarts. I saw him standing in the Entrance Hall, half turned away from you who was speaking to him, but he could not see me. Angry, brooding, ugly as sin with his large nose and the curtains of greasy, black hair framing his sallow face, he looked pretty much like he always had. But something was different that evening. Something drove a wedge between the awkward, scrawny kid whose sheer presence screamed for a good hex and the young man ready to leave and take on the world – at least in my own imagination and I believed to know what it was: Albus Dumbledore talking to him as to an equal.

"You're still wrong," I heard you say. "You may not know it, but I am proud of you. I've been proud of you for so long that I can't remember when I particularly started. And so proud of you am I, that I think nothing will ever change it. You'll make me proud by coming to your senses or by being stuck in your errors, by admitting you were wrong or by clinging to lies till you die. No curse I'll send after you in your grave will stop me from being proud of you. However deep down you'll fall, under my hate and my contempt there'll still be pride and even more pride…"

Severus's voice was stone and ice. "To be proud of something you have to claim it first. You have no right to even look at me." He turned on his heels in a swirl of black school robes, leaving you there to chew on that one, when he saw me standing in the shadow. His eyes met mine, his cold fury radiating from him like circles from a stone falling into water. Oddly enough, he seemed to calm down a bit at the sight of me. "Do you still want to take the responsibility for everything I'm going to do with my life?"

I had told him this once – when you save somebody's life you're forever going to be responsible for this life. _A cold day in hell, Potter, _he had answered. _For the first time ever you did something useful, and now you're going to deal with the aftermath until one of us bites the dust._ "Yes," I said.

"Wrong answer, Potter."

It was not until two and a half years from then that I met him again. Despite your words, I only had suspicions what he had meant and what he actually had done with his life. In a way, the uncertainty was the worst. All around me I had to watch beloved friends and colleagues fall, leaving me to wonder if they were just as dead if I hadn't gone after him that full moon. If I had saved their murderer.

And here I was, one late December evening in 1979, back to the wall in the real sense of the word when I cowered against some Ottery St. Catchpole home, breathless from the fight, my wand gone. My sight was blurred, due to the loss of my glasses, but not blurred enough to mistake the high, slender figure bending over me for anything other than an enemy. Snow was falling on our makeshift battlefield. I heard a baby cry somewhere nearby. The cold air hurt in my lungs, my eyes stung under the rush of panic and odd, final calamity and _that's it,_ was all I could come up with and Lily – _oh God, please, don't let me think of Lily…_

And then – you know what happened? A miracle. There was a flash of silver in the lower half of my field of vision, and after the first unbelieving shock, I realized that it was indeed my glasses being handed to me. Puzzled, I extended a hand and took them, but before I had them on my nose again where they belonged, my saviour had turned around and walked away from me.

When I stepped onto the threshold of Godric's Hollow, I didn't know yet whom to thank for my second birth. All I knew was that I mysteriously had been spared and now was free. Some stranger, some enemy had given me a new life. Lily looked up with a weird expression on her features, when I entered the kitchen, and I instantly saw that she already knew more about what had happened than I did. My gaze shifted from her face to the wooden plain of the kitchen table. My wand was lying next to her cup of tea.

As you can imagine, I spend nights awake trying to figure out what was going on here. So he was one of them, all right. I had expected no less of him. Self-fulfilling prophecy the Muggles call it, I believe. The probability of an individual to act in a certain way tends to increase if their background expects them to. And now, he had paid his debt… sort of. Cut the last bond linking him to me and to you. Or had he? Was that it? Did that count – sparing your mortal enemy instead of killing him? Was this a life-saving act?

Two weeks after, I hid under trees near a graveyard, fighting hard not to vomit at the sight of a bunch of Death Eaters and what fun they had with some captured Muggles. I guess, to them, it was fun. They were laughing while they tortured them. This was not the war between wizards I was used to more or less, not the Dark Orders latest attempt on creating the "better world" they believed in. This had nothing to do with the _cause_, it was – just fun. Levitating non-magical folk over the fire or dangling them upside down like that young girl over there. A vulnerable moment for me to be called on by a voice from my own in some aspects rather unfortunate past. "All right, Potter?"

I turned around, wide-eyed and very slowly. _"Impedimenta!"_ My wand was picked from my fingers with the greatest nonchalance. For the first time since we left Hogwarts, I came to look Severus Snape in the eye. He obviously didn't think it necessary to hide under a mask, not in front of me. He just stood there, familiar hooked nose, pitch-black eyes under wing-shaped brows, smiling at my horror.

"Enjoying the sight? How about you going over there and giving some remedial lessons in tormenting people? Learning from an authority" —his wand touched my cheek— "like you" —he turned my head towards the hideous scenes in the graveyard— "would be most welcome to them." I struggled against his hold on me, in vain. I've never won a single duel against him, not since bloody first year – except for when I had the shock effect on my side. Which is why I rarely bothered with fairness when we were younger. As I suspect you know.

"Any other person might despair at the thought of what those poor creatures ever did to deserve this, but you," I could feel him smile. "You understand – that it's more the fact that they _exist,_ don't you?" I closed my eyes. They snapped open again when my face was roughly turned to him. We were exactly the same height. Which I had considered back then in seventh year, when for a short time I had thought…

"Well, to business. I'm not trying to revive the good old times with swapped places, it's just that I have something of importance to tell you and I need the guarantee that you're listening." If looks could kill, he would already have been six feet under and the amusement in his dark eyes betrayed that he was pretty much aware of it. "There will be an attack on the McKinnon's this night. The others have left already. So… you'd best not hex me after I freed you," —he lifted his wand— "but hurry up to notify whomever you think can handle this."

I'll probably never forgive myself for wasting time on arguing with him before I left to alert you. Marlene and her family could have lived if it hadn't been for my lack of trust. It just seemed so unreal: Severus Snape, the embodiment of a Dark Wizard, suffering from a conflict of interests and betraying his master to save a family of blood-traitors. By dawn, I had to look into the exhausted, grieved faces of half the Order and say "I forgot," when I was asked who gave me the information. Remember how funny you looked at me? You already suspected him, didn't you? You were silently hoping for your prodigal child to return. But he had impressed this upon me. No one must know.

"What are you after?" I had asked before leaving him near the graveyard.

"For you to do something useful, of course. I'm making you special, you're going to be their saviour. Their hero. Don't you want to be a hero anymore?"

I knew what he played at. The October night with the full moon. Somehow my life still seemed to revolve around these few hours in our sixth year. It reminded me of a drawing in a book Remus had once showed me. Some Muggle scientist had thought it up. Anything that has happened before a certain point was only leading there, and anything that will happen afterwards can be traced back to this point. All your being seems to concentrate on one single moment in time. My life was like this drawing in a way. Saving Severus's life was the fixed point.

I wanted to tell him that I hardly was the person he believed to know. The conflict had changed me. I had grown up – even if I never would be as grown up as he had been at age seven when we first met. I could make sense of my life just as much as he could. More cold days in hell, you understand me there.

As you know, we played this game two more times with the same inefficience. The Bones died. The Prewetts. When he informed me of the possible attack on the Longbottoms at the end of January, he only send a letter – probably not to strangle me for being chronically late every other time when there was somebody to save. I remember I was in an extraordinary foul mood when the letter reached me. I had been wondering why he always alerted me last second before the attack. Did he really not know until shortly before, or was all of this part of his twisted plan to make me feel guilty? Because that's what I did. He wanted me to carry the load of responsibility with him. A sadism worthy of him.

This time would be different, I decided when I read the message. I jumped up from my place and called for Lily. We sent messages to you and the Auror headquarters and headed for the Longbottoms' home in Shropshire ourselves. And we made it just in time. We saved our friends and the four of us came out of this alive. That night I felt like walking on air. Two weeks later, they caught me.

I did not see their faces, as they were hidden by masks. I heard the voices, but as much suspicions I had – with the Order files, Sirius's opinion of his various family members, my own self-acquired information from missions – I could not identify any of them. I didn't know who was here and who was not. I lost track of time. The pain absorbed every coherent thought. I screamed and screamed, but only merciless laughter answered. The terrible thought that right now, while you're suffering at the hands of your enemies, the ones you love might not think of you…

He made it. I do not know how, but he got me out. With the fourth or fifth Cruciatus, I lost consciousness. I can only guess that they left me for dead or decided to spare what was left of me for later, so Severus was given the opportunity to sneak me out. When I came back to myself, it was dark around me. I hurt so much, my body was like a single wound to me. I didn't understand at first that it had stopped, I still believed me to be in the dungeons of some respectable pureblood's ancient family home. Yet I was lying on soft materials, there were no harsh or taunting voices anymore. The one speaking to me did so with a familiar silkiness that I never before had considered to be comforting. "Rest. I'll get Lily as soon as I remember where we used to store the Floo Powder…"

"No!" I cried, now fully aware of what had happened. "Don't! She must not see… She must not know. I cannot remember. What did I say? _What did I say?_"

And Severus gave the answer I dreaded the most: "I don't know." I let my head fall back on the pillow again, a sob escaping from my mouth. I easily could have betrayed all and everything. I would never know how much I had divulged, only when it would be to late. I think, I even would have preferred Severus to have been among my torturers. So he could have told me. And I would have had a person to direct all my hatred and despair to. A cup touched my lips. "You better drink this now." Pain and consciousness left me.

Awakening, I believed to feel his hand on my forehead. But when I opened my eyes, he slept in an armchair at the other end of the room, face turned away from me. I noticed where we were only then. Dawn cast the familiar wooden walls into a milky light. It was a small chamber, but affectionately furnitured. "Your room?" I whispered. I didn't need an answer and there wasn't any, either. It was one of the forbidden rooms. Where he had slept when he had been little. When he had lived here with his parents. When I had stayed here with mine, my father had never allowed that my mother or I entered these chambers. He wanted to keep us away from the world he had stolen from Severus. If he had no right to be here, we had even less. "Why did you have to bring me here?" I spat.

"Because it's safe," Severus said calmly. "I couldn't very well ask for your opinion, could I? There was no talking to you, the other night. You were completely in hysterics."

"Excuse me, I'd like to see you in my place – " A second too late, it struck me that he probably had his own experiences. And that incredible formulation, too. He… in my place. I could have slapped myself. "Sorry," I said. He didn't answer, just turned his gaze away, as if listening to the sound of the word fading away somewhere in the back of his head.

I cried some more after that. All due to the effects of the Cruciatus Curse. I spend a never-ending afternoon in this children's bedroom, trembling, sobbing, tears streaming down my face. Unable to get up from the tiny bed. Self-pity, phantom pain, fear of my possible treachery all clashing together above my head. When I woke up the next time, Lily was there. Curled up against my back in the bed. I didn't know if I wanted to start crying again or tear Severus's throat out for bringing her here against my will. I had wanted none of this – but especially not Lily seeing Wicken Fen, perhaps even ask Severus about his family home. My immortal disgrace. My silent legacy.

It has been in Wicken Fen that I first realized that something wasn't right with my life. Nor with my father's. It took me years to figure out the connection between the Fenland mill and the photograph of the pale, dark-eyed woman, hiding behind her hair that my father kept in his drawing room – and link them both to Snivellus Snape, my token Darkling. My very personal target at Hogwarts where I reacted to any kind of Dark magic in the way my father had raised me to. How was I to know of the circumstances under which my father had come to hate the Dark Arts with this vehemence? You knew of course, and you chose to watch how Severus and I were used in a cross-generation conflict of ideology and unrequited feelings.

And that was the crux, wasn't it? I was no exception, I was not special – just about everyone we knew was making Severus's life a living hell. The number of authority figures he had to fight. His guardian, his teachers, the Ministry officials. All the people who knew more about his origins and his parents' death than he did himself. My own father even, who thought, Severus was brilliant and said so, while trying to hold him down at the same time.

_All that you will achieve in life, is bashing your brilliant head._

_Maybe, but until then, I'll use it against you._

I wanted that, too. I craved for this kind of attention. I had never been challenged in that way. Everyone always had let me get away with everything – out of affection, respect or fear, or a mixture of the three of them. When I realised how sick that made me, it was too late already.

Merlin, if I could have been Peter! This petit-bourgeois home of the Pettigrews that so screamed for the only son's rebellion! How I envied Sirius. I so missed something or someone in my life to sow my wild oats. My only real enemy and real challenge was Severus – and he didn't consider me worthy. He wasn't as dependent on me as an enemy as I was on him. He had adults to fight with, adults like he himself was one. I needed him more than he needed me.

I needed my anathema – moody, confused, unpopular, all the things I didn't want people to connect to me. The caricature that showed my own greatness all the clearer. Except for the part of me that wanted nothing more than his attention. To hear him grudgingly admit (and if it was only a single time) that I indeed was as cool, as brilliant and as good a flyer as the rest of the world recognized. But the more I took on him, the higher he carried his greasy, hook-nosed head.

And least of all I could stand the sight of someone my age who had a war going on with my Dad about some family heritage. And handled himself so fine. And won it back from my poised, untouchable, powerful father in the end. It was something I could not understand. Neither could Severus, of course. We knew just about enough to realize that something was kept from us, something of importance. But it is a dangerous game, poking your nose into the older generation's business. Often enough you get more than you bargained for. Severus awaited his parents' tragedy, me my father's obsession with a woman other than my Mum.

That's something I can hear when Dementors come near me, you know. That last confrontation between Severus and my Dad, only weeks before he died. From my father Severus had turned around to me. _What more pathetic can there be than a man hating a child for not being his? Only said man's son hating me for not being his brother._

"Honey," he said on our second morning in Wicken Fen. I looked up from my misery. "Sweet things calm the stomach." I wanted to say that I felt all right, but then I looked at Lily who was staring at Severus on her part. She was faintly green in the face and had her mouth covered with her hand. It took me a moment or two until the sickle dropped.

To imagine that she couldn't have told me anymore. If I had died and never known of my child… And it was only then that it struck me with the force of a hurricane that now I was the one indebted to somebody. I see you smile, Albus. No, I didn't say thank you. Neither that time nor all the other times that followed. What? Oh, eleven to thirteen. He's leading. Amazing what can happen in two years of common espionage.

Instead of solving the enigma that he is, he became more and more unfathomable with each time. It was harder than ever to figure out what he was thinking when I found him after the battle that had cost Rosier and Wilkes, his oldest and best friends from Hogwarts, their lives. He didn't know where to go, gravely wounded as he was – yet he would not just show up on my doorstep, it was I who had to go looking for him. And what was his only comment, when I put my arms around his broken body and lifted him from the street in intention to get him proper medical care?

"Why can't you fucking mind your own business?"

"Someone has to look after you. And it's not like we're drowning in volunteers or anything…"

I told him then, I'll never know why. I said to him what I entrusted you with at the end of seventh year – that for a short time I had believed that he was my half-brother. My father's other son.

"I'm not," he said, curious eyes on me.

"Yeah, I know that _now_…"

"You had seen photos of my father before. Everyone says I look just like him."

"Well, you know what they say about children who look too much like their fathers." It felt strangely good to finally talk about it.

I once tried to apologize to him. He throw a fit, as you can imagine. You know what he said to me after raging for a respectable while and telling me exactly what I deserved in his opinion? _I'd like as much good memories of you to call my own as I have bad ones. Get us there, then maybe I'll reconsider forgiving you. _

Okay. I'll say it just once and never again. Truth be told, I don't respect Severus Snape for what he is or what he did. I admire him. It is as simple as that. And I cannot tell him, ever.

Hawking. That Muggle scientist's name. I remember now. All I ever did before, has to be judged by the measure of saving Severus's life. And all I did afterwards as well. You know this, don't you? This feeling of inavitibility, of having been touched by fate. In light moments it seems to me that perhaps I did the right thing, that perhaps you said the right words – or maybe we got it all wronger than ever and he just outdid himself on coming back to where he was needed. Despite us being the dunderheads we are.

He's something very special (and he bloody well knows it, for that matter). And I'm not. He and Lily and Sirius – they are the exception to the rule. I can only feed off being their lover, best friend or mortal enemy.

In a twisted way, this makes me special, too. Do you understand that?

Yes, I think, you can bring him in again. I won't shout, I promise. I'm still upset, but go ahead, tell me what he found out for you. It's just as if everything I used to believe in is going downhill and rapidly so. Is that what growing up means? Losing even the last of your illusions? I wish it had never happened to me, then. When we were younger, Severus used to be proud of his honesty, Alice of her inability to hurt people. I used to trust my friends.

I'll listen, yes. But I don't have to do what he wants. I can still try to save us.

**_Author's Note:_** Always think of it: reviewing is good karma...


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